A few pics of last night’s aurora shot near Girdwood. It was cloudy with rain in Anchorage, luckily, I got a phone call from my friend Joel in Girdwood to let me know the sky was clear there and the aurora was in full swing.

There were some crazy flashes in the sky. I found out later the flashes I saw was lightning that caused a deep purple in some of my photos.

Like this:

Sabrina, Tika, and I decided to change things up this year. We love the fall in the Yukon, but instead of heading to Haines, like we normally do, we decided to check out Skagway since we had never been. We got a late start on Friday, but lucked out and got far enough north to escape the clouds in Southcentral and got a small display of aurora.

Aurora and the just past full harvest moon.

The Yukon!

Sabrina in the Yukon, Tika in Alaska.

Fall colors along the Alcan.

Bove Island, Yukon.

When we got to Skagway, we happened upon Octoberfest and some great music at the brewery. We also learned of a race the next day, “Box of Rocks.” It’s a self-timed 3 mile race from downtown Skagway to Upper Dewey Lake a 3100 ft elevation gain. 2600 ft of that is in the last 2.5 miles between Lower Lake and Upper Lake. At the lake, everyone reports their time, drinks a PBR, and helicopters down! We signed up right away 🙂 Suprisingly, they even let Tika in the helicopter.

Upper (Dewey) Lake.

Temsco helicopter landing near Upper Lake.

From inside the helicopter, heading to Skagway on the right.

I found a chair that suited me.

We found that if you didn’t hit Skagway on a cruise ship day, most things are shut down. Unfortunately, that meant we couldn’t ride the White Pass RR. We decided to head back a little early, to spend more time in the Yukon with the fall colors and to check out some spots we had never been to between Whitehorse and Skagway. The area between the border and Carcross was stunning.

Venus Mill on Windy Arm, Yukon Territory.

Fall was definitely in full swing.

The biggest suprise of the trip was the Carcross Desert-northern sand dunes made up of glacial silt.

One of my favorite parts of living in Alaska is flying in small bush planes. Since getting to take my first flight when I was ten, in a small Cessna with my older brother’s friend at the yoke, I was hooked (I’m still unsure why my mom let us fly with a seventeen year old pilot….although, I’m not complaining!). Small airplanes are a way of life here, for both recreation and business. I love the access that they allow to the remote areas of the state-small lakes, gravel bars, and glaciers. Here are a few pictures I took flying from Takahula Lake in the Brooks Range to Bettles-a beautiful flight, with a great (and quite hilarious) pilot from Brooks Range Aviation.

The Bomber traverse has been a trip on my list for years and I figured the best way to spend my birthday weekend was with good friends on an awesome 18 mile backpacking trip in the Talkeetnas! The B-29 Bomber crashed on a glacier (now known as Bomber Glacier) in the Talkeetna Mountains in November of 1957. There were four survivors, and six people perished in the crash. At the bottom of this blog I’ve included an interview with Calvin Campbell, one of the survivors and hero of the crash, that I found online. The traverse starts at Gold Mint trailhead in Hatcher’s Pass, heading 8 miles to the Mint Hut.

We started in some sprinkling rain that broke to blue skies and sunshine when we got to the hut. Sabrina hiking in.

Laura and I having a Toyota moment 🙂

The Mint Hut.

The mountains above the hut. Backdoor Gap is to the right of the peak in the middle.

From the hut you climb a boulder field to Backdoor Gap (5715 ft above sea level), then descend down to the Penny Royal Glacier.

The crew at Backdoor Gap. Kasey, Laura-our token Canadian :), Sabrina, and Dan. I figured Dan is either very lucky or not so smart to go backpacking with four girls. After the trip, he said the jury is still out 🙂

The Penny Royal Glacier. We were treated to perfect views of Denali.

There is no shortage of talus fields in Hatcher’s Pass. Sabrina descending one of many.

Kasey and the bomber. Airplane parts are strewn across the glacier, but this is the main wreckage.

Laura on the 2000 ft descent down from Bomber Pass to Upper Reed Lake.

Sabrina hiking out at Upper Reed Lake. By the time we got to the lake, low clouds had rolled in, obscuring the pass. By the time we hit Lower Reed Lake it was raining cats and dogs with a little bit of hail. 30 minutes later, it was clear skies again. Got to love Alaska.

18 miles, 2 mountain passes, and 5,000 vertical feet later we finished the traverse. The best birthday weekend!

Here is the story behind the bomber. It was originally a radio interview on September 14, 2000 on local radio station KLEF 98.1 FM.

Heroism High in the Talkeetnas

Good evening. Here’s a compelling story from yesteryear about bravery and heroism high in the Talkeetna Mountains, near Hatcher’s Pass.

On November 15, 1957, about 6:30 p.m., a B-29 bomber from Elmendorf Air Force Base with a crew of 10 was returning to base after a radar-calibrating mission farther north. Weather had deteriorated and the ceiling had dropped to below 4,000 feetas they made their way south past Talkeetna. A routine radio report from the aircraft reported no problems. The plane was scheduled to arrive at Elmendorf at 7 p.m.

Staff Sergeant Calvin Campbell, then 34, was assigned to the right scanner position, about mid-point in the aircraft behind the engines. One of his tasks was to monitor the two engines on the right side. Staff Sergeant Robert McMurray had similar duties on the left side. In the pilot seat was Major Robert Butler.

In a recent telephone interview Campbell, now 77, described what happened next

“We were descending toward Elmendorf at good speed, when we hit real hard with no warning. Everything went black…I mean real black. Then we hit again and it felt so cold. It felt like the wings tore off and when I crawled out, I saw that the fuselage was broken into two. We were on a snowy field—I didn’t know at the time it was a glacier. It was so quiet.

“McMurray was right below me, pinned between the fuselage and the observation post. I pulled him out of there. Navigator Lt. Claire Johnson had dragged himself out of the plane and collapsed in the snow nearby. I wrapped them both in parachutes and put Johnson in a sleeping bag that I found in the cargo hold.

“I could hear Sgt. Garza, the flight engineer, yelling from farther up the slope. He was still inside the nose section. It had sheared off and gone up the hill about 500 feet.”

“When I got up to Garza I soon realized he was the only other survivor—it was just the four of us. The pilot, Major Robert A. Butler and the five other officers had all perished. Garza weighed about 140 lbs…it was hard pulling him out. I placed him on a piece of canvas and dragged him down to the others. He had a broken arm and broken leg. I went back to the cargo hold and got more sleeping bags and then got us into the wreckage out of the wind—it felt very cold, but I had extra flight clothing to help cover us up.”

Air Rescue at Elmendorf began its helicopter search at daybreak the following morning, zeroing in on the B-29’s last known position. By 9:30 they found the crash site—on a broad glacial slope at fifty three hundred feet —about a mile northeast of upper Reed Lake. Thanks to Campbell’s decisive actions, the injured men survived the night. They were taken to the hospital at Elmendorf.

“I think we were about 17 degrees off course.” Campbell says. “Too far to the east—put us right into those high mountains.”

Campbell said that except for a scratch over his eye, he was unharmed. He later would suffer complications from frostbitten feet, however, and lose the use of several toes.

Calvin K. Campbell received a special commendation from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Soldier’s Medal, a decoration for valor in a non-combat situation. He retired from the Air Force in 1968.

“I didn’t feel like a hero or anything,” says Campbell. “I just did what I had to do. “The other guys would have done the same thing for me.”

Today, the broken bomber sits on the glacier as a quiet memorial to the six men who died there 43 years ago.